The View From the Roof: Praying for Deliverance

[On the Iraq Study Group report and the Bush perspective]

There were enough good ideas, anodyne suggestions and blurry recommendations (blurriness is not always bad in foreign affairs -- confusion can buy time!) that I thought the administration would see it as a life raft. Instead they pushed it away. Like the old woman in the flood who took to the roof and implored God to send a boat to save her. A hunk of wood floated by as she prayed with fervor. A busted wooden door floated by as the waters rose and she doubled her prayers. Finally she cried "God, I asked you to save me and you didn't send a boat!" And the voice of God answered: "I sent you a hunk of wood and a door!" We don't always recognize deliverance when it arrives. ( Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal).